Poison
by scarlet phlame
Summary: People change over years. Rikki comes back to Mako Island. (Character study)


Summary: People change over years. Rikki comes back to Mako Island.

AN: So I should be working on writing my novel, and studying, and finishing my homework... but I'm bored and block-y, so... H2O FanFiction! Yaay! (jazz hands) I've never written H2O before, so if everyone's OOC, let me know.

R&R!

* * *

She stumbles across it when she's by the Moon Pool.

It's all accidental, really. It's a full moon, big mistake, but she's just come back to Mako Island after years away at university and college. Gone are the mermaid powers, gone is the scared, insecure kid she used to be. She's graduated, changed.

It looks different than she remembers. It's cleaner, somehow has more of a finished touch to it. It's been stayed in. She wonders if it's another group of three girls again; like her and her close circle of friends when she had a tail and secrets she was forced to hide.

She doesn't grow a fin. She doesn't have powers. She isn't strong. She's just Rikki, right now, and, at the moment, that's okay.

She just sort of hopes she doesn't end up like Miss Chantham in a few years. Sometimes she thinks she might, just to get away from it all. Know she's there for a reason, to help others. Even so, there is that little part of her that says that there's no point in her helping anyone, because nobody's ever really helped her.

Rikki's just about to leave, really, she is, when a flare of light erupts from the gape in the Moon Pool.

Full moon.

The water glistens, glows, and she finds herself moving towards it, like in a trance. A grin spreads across her face. She tilts her head to the side and watches the water move. She's like a kid again, and suddenly years and years of life and living and growing have melted away.

From out of the abyss strides a figure.

She cannot recognize who it is; they don't form a full figure at first, at first it is just waves and discolored water, and she steps back a few before the waves and water and lines form a recognizable shape. And there, before her, stands the girl she recognizes from Miss Chantham's locket. Julia.

It's strange seeing her out of sepia, almost as if she's stepped out of her photo, all dressed up in red, and suddenly she's thinking of that dress that Zane bought her; an occasion that feels like years ago.

She mumbles something sarcastic sounding at the figure that's emerged from the pool under her breath–the other doesn't seem catch it all. Rikki sits down, damp sand between her toes. She doesn't grow a tail. She's evolved.

Julia mirrors her movements, takes a seat, and Rikki thinks of those snake-trance shows on Discovery Channel.

"Weird," Rikki mutters.

"I was you, once," Julia says.

"Right. Thanks, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Suppose you're here to give me some sort of a ghost speech 'cos of the full moon, then you walk back into your pond again, all mystic and glowy," Rikki continues, then frowns. "Either that, or I had way too much of that smoothie mix."

She's rambling and she knows it, and she knows that Julia knows it, too. But it's weird; she thought she escaped this all long ago, and to see it now brings back memories she'd rather forget.

"You don't really get away from it." Julia traces something in the sand. Rikki tries not to look at it, but she thinks it might be a heart.

"No, you're right, you don't," Rikki agrees. "I'm still afraid of water. I thought I'd get over it eventually, but I guess years of running from the truth does that to you, you know? And there were good times, too, plenty of them, but... everything's too volatile. When I think of my time as a mermaid, I think of everything that it entailed."

"Lying to my dad, to everyone I met; it was cool and fun when I didn't need anyone, but then I did, and I couldn't tell them. And I still miss being able to do the things that I used to be able to do. I can't talk to anyone about it. Cleo and Emma and even Bella are gone now, and it's just me, and I thought that would be okay because I'd be able to handle myself, but it's not a shared secret anymore, it's just mine, and it's just my burden."

"We handled it with–"

"Zane was different," she argues. "I could keep him a secret from everyone. It was like... he was mine, you know? He was... he cared about me. He would do anything for me. It was like there was a different person underneath him, underneath me, and those people worked together, but there was too much on the surface happening for us to get along."

"I don't know how I did it back then. I don't get how any of us managed to get along back then. But we're all different people now. We've changed. We'll still remember what we had, and wonder how we could've changed things, but it's over. The story's done. There isn't a happy ending. There is no ending, not ever, not until we turn into Miss Chantham and then into dust and then into nothing."

Julia shrugs. "I think the whole water–ghost thing is pretty cool."

Rikki shakes her head. "I'm done with it. I don't know why I came back here–just nostalgia. But I'm not a mermaid anymore. I'm done with this... whatever this is."

It's a lie.


End file.
